Publications

Animating with a self-organizing population the reconstruction of medieval Mértola

R.F. Antunes and A.P. Cláudio and M.B. Carmo and L. Correia
Presented at 15th Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage 
This paper provides a contribution to the field of historical simulations of the past. Throughout this document, we will describe a novel model to animate these simulations with autonomous characters exhibiting heterogeneous and spontaneous behaviours and we will discuss a case study, the simulation of the medieval village of Mértola, in the South of Portugal. We will first detail the work of construction of the urban layout. Using manual modeling combined with procedural generation, we have generated a virtual space containing some of the military structures, such as the defensive walls and the watch tower in the river, as well as some of the civilian housing inside the protection of the walls. Following, we will describe the virtual population inhabiting the space composed of autonomous individuals dressed with historical rigour. These inhabitants of the virtual city, are equipped with limited intelligence and personality traits which allows them to self-organize, interact with each other and at the local market. They communicate with their fellow citizens in the narrow streets of the village using expressive gestures and postures that convey their inner emotional states.

From Self-Portraits To Medieval Simulations: Computational Artificial Ecosystems As Multicontextual Authoring Tools

Rui Filipe Antunes
Presented at  ARTECH2017 (The 8th International Conference on Digital Arts)
​In this paper, we examine virtual ecosystems as general purpose authoring tools for heterogeneity and spontaneity, and discuss the use of such systems as animation drivers in a variety of contexts: from artistic abstract work, to dance choreographies, or even in the simulation of historical spaces. First, we present the background, motivation and summary for the project. Then, we discuss the use of these systems in the artworks Senhora da Graça, xTNZ, Where is Lourenço Marques?, in the dance choreography, Vishnu’s Dance of Life and Death, and in the simulation of the population of the medieval village of Mértola. This emphasizes how an artistic practice informs a movement of transition, taking us from the use of artefacts that mostly rely on their traditionally associated eco-narratives to functional tool generators of diversity and heterogeneity. Finally, we close the article to contend that these systems function as utilitarian authoring tools for multi-contextual purposes.

​​Recreating a Medieval Urban Scene With Virtual Intelligent  Characters:  Steps To Create the Complete Scenario

Ana Paula Cláudio, Maria Beatriz Carmo, Alexandre Antonio de Carvalho, Willian Xavier and Rui Filipe Antunes
Presented at Virtual Archaeological Review
From historical advice to 3D modeling and programming, the process of reconstructing cultural heritage sites populated with virtual inhabitants is lengthy and expensive, and it requires a large set of skills and tools. These constraints make it increasingly difficult, however not unattainable, for small archaeological sites to build their own simulations. In this article, we describe our attempt to minimize this scenario. We describe a framework that makes use of free tools or campus licenses and integrates the curricular work of students in academia. We present the details of methods and tools used in the pipeline of the construction of the virtual simulation of the medieval village of Mértola in the south of Portugal. We report on: a) the development of a lightweight model of the village, including houses and terrain and b) its integration in a game engine in order to include c) a virtual population of autonomous inhabitants in a simulation running in real-time

Bio-Inspired Virtual Populations: Adaptive Behavior with Affective Feedback

Rui Filipe Antunes and Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann

Presented at CASA 2016 ( The 29th Conference on Computer Animation and Social Agents)

In this paper, we describe an agency model for generative populations of humanoid characters, based upon temporal variation of affective states. We have built on an existing agent framework from Sequeira et al., and adapted it to be susceptible to temperamental and emotive states in the context of cooperative and non-cooperative interactions based on trading activity. More specifically, this model operates within two existing frameworks: a) intrinsically motivated reinforcement learning, structured upon affective appraisals in the relationship of the agents with their environment; b) a multi-temporal representation of individual psychology, common in the field of affective computing, structuring individual psychology as a tripartite relationship: emotions-moods-personality. Results show a populations of agents that express their individuality and autonomy with a high level of heterogeneous and spontaneous behaviors, while simultaneously adapting and overcoming their perceptual limitations.

Human Crowd Simulation: What Can We Learn From ALife?

Rui Filipe Antunes and Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann
Presented at  ALIFE 2016 (The 15th  Internat. Conf. on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems)
One of the key components of the suspension of disbelief in real-time 3D simulations is the apparent authenticity of actions and gestures played by the individuals of the virtual population. This paper addresses this aspect of simulation, by investigating ways to improve the behavioral realism of virtual humanoid characters in groups and small multitudes. We look at the framework of ALife, identifying and analyzing existing bio-mimicking techniques that can be used in this context and contribute towards the improvement of the plausibility from the generated simulations. By looking at the literature, we identify some of the key elements from ALife
that are being progressively incorporated in the simulations of groups and crowds. Then, we discuss a generative model for spontaneity and heterogeneity where bio-inspired agents are individualized with DNA-like strings and appear organized
hierarchically exchanging token units of energy, mass, and resources. The result is a generative population of agents that self-organize and interact autonomously, exhibiting interesting social dynamics based on biological tenets and an economy of resources. We analyze this simulation quantitatively with the purpose of studying the impact of each of the previously identified techniques.

​Virtual cities inhabited by autonomous characters: a pipeline for their production

Ana Paula Cláudio, Maria Beatriz Carmo, Alexandre Antonio de Carvalho, Willian Xavier, and Rui Filipe Antunes 
Presented at ARQUEOLÓGICA 2.0 - 8th International Congress on Archaeology, Computer Graphics, Cultural Heritage and Innovation
Creating 3D reconstruction of the past is a challenging task requiring a vast set of technical skills, with teams usually including historians, 3D artists and IT technicians. In this paper, we describe our combined efforts to work under a low‑budget pipeline to make a 3D simulation of the medieval village of Mértola in the south of Portugal. The work we describe in this paper is part of a larger project called "BIHC - Bio- Inspired Human Crowds" whose partial objectives are the development of a set of tools for the animation of 3D reconstructions of cultural heritage sites. We have focused on developing a lightweight model of the village that would allow the incorporation of virtual autonomous inhabitants in a simulation running in real-time and visitable by online audiences in both i) bird’s-eye and ii) first-person points of view. The contribution of this paper is the identification of a set of tools and stages that can be used to obtain the final interactive environment recreating the inhabited ancient village.